MAURO PAGANI

Yes, this is the same Mauro Pagani who used to play in a well known Italian band named PFM and i wanted to review this album ages ago, now i feel like writing something decent. It´s curious to see that non of the collabs have actually reviewed this album, i use to read the reviews of the album im about to review, i hope to see soon a couple of reviews more about it.

So, Mauro Pagani during the years has gained recognition not only in his country but around the world, his work as a member of PFM was remarkable on the band´s music and of course it helped him to gain respect from the same musicians of the best 70s Italian prog bands and some more better known musicians in the local Italian scene.

After he left PFM, he started a career as a solo artist and this first and self-titled album was released back in 1978, Mauro Pagani contains 8 songs and a total lenght of 36 minutes, maybe we could wonder what would have happened if he hadn´t left the band, better leave it to our imagination and concentrate in this great, believe me great album.

I will start now with the songs´review, but first i would like to let you all know that in this album we will find other known names besides Pagani, such as Franz di Cioccio, Patrick Djivas, Demetrio Stratos and Giulio Capiozzo, among others, who worked together with Mauro in this album, and they were really helpful.

Europa Minor is the opener, i love the opening acts because i like to see the way the album runs, some first songs are strong, some others melodic and some other just show a brief example of the music we actually are going to listen. this song starts as it has to start, with a clear and obviously great violin playing with a mediterranean flavour, the sound is not that symphonic oriented, but some kind of jazzy-folk style (if that thing exists), the song follows with that mediterranean style, and there are some clappies, (mm that word remnds me to some known PA charachter who im sure loves this album)

Argiento features for the first time in the album vocals, female vocals actually by a girl named Teresa who actually i don´t know who is or how did she get to sing on this album, not my favourite vocal style, acoustic guitars ala folk RPI of the 70s, a nice melody.

Violer d´amores is a short violin solo song with a classical style, he shows a little bit of his virtuosism, he is a trained musician, if you didn´t know.

La cittá aromatica it´s a nice song, as normal a violin driven song, but this time accompanied by the exquisite playing of his ex PFM mates, a beautiful instrumental passage, great music and noticeable guitar playing, a very enjoyable song.

L´Albero di Canto (Pt. 1) is the second time in the album we hear voices, but this time Demetrio Stratos gave his unique vocal style to this song, we will listen to the piano first, then violin and the odd but incredible Stratos voice, the song actually sounds like some Area tunes, one of the best songs of the album without a doubt.

Choron starts with a flute and a calm and soft sound which lasts almost 2 minutes and then fades out, then a totally folkish sound begins with some percussion which in fact reminds me to some of my country (Mexico) folk passages, then Pagani´s violin enters and the song follows the same road throughout the 5 minutes.

Da qualche parte tra la Calabria e Corfù il blu comincia davvero , i was lazy to write the name of this song so i copied and pasted it from above (lol), now we are about to reach the goal, we are in the final 10 minutes, this song is beautiful, acoustic guitar which reminds me to Riccardo Zappa, bello, molto bello.

L´Albero di canto (pt.2) after a great instrumental acoustic guitar song, we finish this great album which i really enjoy listening to, as you can imagine as the first part of this song, we will listen to Stratos vocals and the Area flavoured song, since this is kind of a reprise.

I like the album a lot, i think every RPI lover should take a listen to this. Not outstanding, not bad at all, an excellent addition to any prog lover, 4 stars.

Enjoy it!

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